The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to communications in a machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless wide area network (WAN). Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, sensor data, tracking data, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time-division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency-division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) systems.
Generally, a wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple devices. In some examples, these devices may be sensors and/or meters configured to collect data about other devices and transmit this data to an end server via a base station. These sensors and/or meters may be referred to as M2M devices. Base stations may communicate with M2M devices on forward and reverse links. Each base station has a coverage range, which may be referred to as the coverage area of the cell. A base station may transmit information using a number of channels within a frame. An M2M device may monitor channels within multiple frames to identify data or messages transmitted from the base station. Because the base station transmits to a number of M2M devices, an M2M device may unnecessarily monitor channels that do not carry data or messages for that particular device. As a result, the M2M device may consume a high level of power monitoring communications transmitted from the base station that do not include data or messages intended for that M2M device.